Rebecca Hersher

I was like, okay, voicemail.

Like, great.

But people really seem to take these warnings seriously.

Like, before that terrible November flood hit Praktush...

Klee Polly got a voicemail warning on her phone.

And she says in the past, they might have sheltered in their homes when the water was rising and just hoped that the water wouldn't get too high.

But now that they get these warnings, no one stays.

She explains, when we heard the announcement, we took our children to the safe house.

And that's like a government-run evacuation site up the road.

Yeah.

They actually also evacuated.

So the village chief hooked his phone up to his car speaker and drove it through town, broadcasting the message on repeat.

He does that every time there's a warning.

And that's actually how 82-year-old Khar Sama and his wife found out.

They announced it via loudspeaker, Samad told me.

And then a neighbor gave the elderly couple a ride to the evacuation center.

When the floodwaters went down, everyone went home.

Residents said there was one fatality.

It was a young child whose family lives on a boat, so they couldn't evacuate.

By the time we visited town about a month after the flood, life in Praktish was back to normal.